COLUMN: Oklahoma and Brent Venables Are Desperate for Better Discipline, Physicality
NORMAN — Baylor played tough, physical, disciplined football on Saturday afternoon.
Oklahoma did not.
In a nutshell, that was head coach Brent Venables’ assessment after the Sooners suffered their fourth loss of what was a once-promising season by dropping a 38-35 defeat at home.
“They played with discipline, they played with physical toughness and situationally played incredibly well,” Venables said.
So why was Baylor the more physical team?
“I don’t know,” Venables said. “Their team was more physical. Why is that? I don’t know.”
Why did Oklahoma lack discipline in the realms of penalties and composure and being assignment-sound? Venables didn’t have an answer for that one, either.
“We have to be more disciplined,” he said. “I’ve been talking about discipline for 11 months and being a more disciplined football team.”
Untimely and unnecessary penalties crippled one offensive drive and prolonged one defensive drive. The offensive miscue cost points. The defensive error allowed points.
Eleven months, Venables said. Clearly, his message has not been received.
Venables even painted a zero-sum picture: mistakes equal losses, fewer mistakes equal wins.
“In some of the wins, we’ve been able to overcome it when we’re playing more timely,” Venables said. “Maybe they’re one out of three on the fourth downs (instead of 3-for-3). Again, in five wins we had good discipline. In the four losses, maybe not. Is that fair?”
Probably not. A football game is almost a living, breathing entity. It evolves over four hours, it is both victim to and creator of its own circumstance. But Venables isn’t wrong. In such a results-oriented space, losing exposes the flaws, while winning hides them.
Lincoln Riley’s final OU team proved that last season, when so many close victories over so many mediocre football teams led to a 9-0 start in what became an 11-2 charade of a season.
This team isn’t good enough to overcome those mistakes like last year’s team did. And this year’s coaching staff doesn’t have the answers to fix them.
“I’ve seen moments where we’ve played with great discipline,” Venables said. “Today, there were plenty of situations where we didn’t.”
Can discipline be learned in 11 months? Apparently not.
But can it be nurtured in practice? Fomented in meetings and winter weight training and summer fitness tests, on plane rides and in hotels and in the mundane, daily routines of playing college football?
Or does it take years — and multiple recruiting classes — for those seeds to grow?
“It starts with coaches getting the players to play with more discipline,” Venables said, “and then the players in the moment playing with more discipline.”
Venables seems to be the right man for the job. He will fortify the foundation of Oklahoma football — but it will take time. It might seem a million miles away now, but OU should have a better chance to win the program’s eighth national championship under Venables in the SEC than it did under Riley in the Big 12 — the 2017 Rose Bowl notwithstanding.
Venables could have said, “I need time to recruit my style of player.” But he didn’t. He won’t. He’s not about to throw this team and these players under the bus. It’s 2022. This is his team. These are his players.
And to his credit, Venables embraces that — hard.
“I thought our guys’ will to win was there,” Venables said. “And again, timeliness and the precision, the timing that it takes, the toughness that it takes at the right moments, we gotta do a better job helping ‘em, we got to get our guys better at playing with the discipline that it takes to win.”
But the bottom line — and Venables knows this all too well — is that OU doesn’t pay him $7 million a year to say “I don’t know” after a tough loss. Among other things, the job description requires him to have the answers — however unpleasant those answers may be.
“This is an intense, passionate game,” he said, “but you have to have great focus. Whether it’s false starts or holding or hands to the face or (pass interference), all those things add up. Those things punish you. For whatever reason it is, ‘Oh, he’s pushing me.’ No kidding. If you want to play on this football team, you’re gonna play with discipline. You gotta play disciplined.
“Sometimes you gotta from your mistakes I guess.”
Again, Venables knows this: that goes for players and coaches alike.
